Aldofina Saldaña has returned to Xaltianguis, Guerrero, Mexico, after living for several years in the United States. Waves of immigrant families have left the U.S. and returned to their native countries because of the slow economy and higher deportation rates under the Obama administration. Saldaña returned to Mexico willingly after foreclosure loomed over the Santa Ana home she shared with her husband, Baltazar.

Luis Noe Saldaña sneaks through the back door of his grandmother's tienda (convenience store). Many Mexican families run small stores -- like this one, packed full of odds and ends -- to supplement their incomes.

Adolfina Saldaña runs a small tienda -- or convenience store -- from the front of her home in in Xaltianguis, Guerrero, Mexico. Saldaña says she makes little profit from the store, but allows her to buy food stock and cleaning supplies wholesale for her own use.

Bertin Olvera Saldaña said he and his wife, Maria de Jesus Memije, were duped by a bad immigration attorney. Now, the couple attempts to eke out a living by growing corn but it's not enough to keep them afloat. Leaving for a bigger city with more jobs, such as Acapulco, is not possible because the area is besieged by lawlessness spawned by a drug war in the region.

Bertin Olvera Saldaña said he built his home with wages made in the United States. However, the home deteriorated after years of neglect and he is now too poor to buy the necessary supplies to fix rotting portions of the roof.

Bertin Olvera Saldaña, his wife Maria de Jesus Memije and their young daughter Myriam now live in a home in Santa Barbara, steps away from a river where lush plants press all around and there are no paved streets. The closest big city is Acapulco, which is a three-hour car ride away. The villagers are often incommunicado with the outside world after tropical storms knock down power lines and flood the rivers surrounding it, making them impassible by most vehicles.

A day after this picture was taken, Teodulo Parra took a ride in the bed of a pickup to Acapulco, which would be the first leg of his journey back to Santa Ana. Parra, deported multiple times before, proved unsuccessful in his attempt to cross the San Ysidro border illegally into California. He was caught by border agents and is now detained at James A. Musick Facility in Irvine, awaiting an immigration hearing.

Saul Campos, 35, moved to Santa Ana when he was 11 years old. He lived most of his life illegally in the United States. About a year ago, he was deported after a Santa Ana police officer arrested him on suspicion of being drunk in public. This was his first deportation, he said. "These are the consequences for behaving badly," Campos said.

Saul Campos, 35, was deported a year ago. He lived in Santa Ana since he was 11 years old. His shirt is a nod to the American life he once led. "I've lived most of my life in the U.S.," he said. Campos said his misdeeds landed him in deportation proceedings. He said he didn't appreciate his life in Santa Ana until now. "Over there you have everything at arms length, like food," he said. "Here, I spend all day looking for something to eat."

Marta Adame, deported four years ago, said she's resigned herself to her new life. She said she spends most of her time bored and missed the hustle and bustle of life in Santa Ana. She spends most her time in her makeshift convenience store to kill time, she said. The little profit she makes goes to fund phone calls to friends and family in the United States.

Children play in the road in the small town of Santa Barbara, in the coastal Mexican state of Guerrero. The town is remote; the road behind the children turns into a muddy, one-lane path that requires vehicles to ford the local river three times before heading an additional 40 or so twisty miles toward Acapulco. Despite that, there is an inexorable link between Santa Barbara and Orange County, Santa Ana in particular. Almost every family in town has at least one person who has lived in Orange County.

Adolfina Saldaña examines the corn crop growing behind her home in Xaltianguis, Guerrero, Mexico, where Saldaña has returned after living for several years in the United States. Waves of immigrant families have left the U.S. and returned to their native countries because of the slow economy and higher deportation rates under the Obama administration. Saldaña returned to Mexico willingly after foreclosure loomed over the Santa Ana home she shared with her husband, Baltazar.

Adolfina Saldaña said moving back to her home in Xaltianguis, in the Mexican state of Guerrero, has led to a variety of problems for her family. She's separated from her husband, Baltazar, and she's taken on care of a grandson after her adult son was killed in an accident. She blames that for depression, chills, and other ills she's suffered since returning to Mexico.

Maria de Jesus Memije said it's difficult to re-integrate into Mexican society after being in the United States for 13 years. She said she's returned changed, and more Americanized. In Mexico, she does the family's laundry in the river that runs just outside their front door. The floor of their modest home is compacted dirt, and the roof leaks during the rainy season, because of years without maintenance while they were up north. The family doesn't have the $700 it would take to repair the roof.

Adolfina Saldaña laughs with her grandson Luis Noe. She is now his caretaker after her son died in a diving accident soon after she returned to Mexico. It's one of the many ways her life has changed after living for 20 years in the United States.

Since returning from the United States after 20 years of living in Santa Ana, Adolfina Saldaña suffers from depression, chills, and some unexplained illness, possibly a nerve disorder, in her left hand. The affliction makes her hand sensitive to light and temperature changes, so she constantly wears a glove for what she says is protection.

After his deportation, Ernesto Almazan Serrano thinks the conditions he's living in now may be a punishment from God for his misdeeds while living illegally in the United States. He's been deported multiple times, many of them because of drug-related offenses. An immigration judge banned him from legally setting foot in the United States for 10 years.

Ernesto Almazan Serrano's home in Santa Barbara, a rural town in the highlands of southern Mexico, is literally falling apart. It didn't benefit from the 30 years he spent living illegally in the United States. The home has few interior walls, a wood oven, and windows missing glass. With all of his family living in Santa Ana, he has little help to get back on his feet in Mexico.

Adolfina Saldaña tends to her store in the small city of in Xaltianguis, in the Mexican state of Guerrero. Saldaña and her husband, Baltazar, returned to Guerrero willingly when the economy soured in the United States and they lost their Santa Ana home to foreclosure. The Saldañas have returned to a Mexico beset by violence fueled by drug cartel turf wars.

Adolfina Saldaña and her husband, Baltazar, are better off than most families who return to Mexico from the United States. The pair, unlike many others, returned willingly to Mexico after 20 years when the economy tanked. Saldaña said she would like to return to the U.S., but this time as a legal resident.

Teodulo Parra stands in front of the nearly 100 acres of corn he helped raise for a fellow Mexican national now living in the United States. The warm climate surrounding Santa Barbara in the Mexican state of Guerrero allows for several crops of corn to be grown each year. Corn is one of products that provides the scant jobs to be found in Santa Barbara, which is why so many of the town's men and women have sought a better life in the United States.

A rainbow follows a typical afternoon rainstorm in Santa Barbara, a town of about 800 people in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero. The town got electricity only 30 years ago, and has only two phone lines serving the entire village. It used to be one of those places where its only inhabitants were small children, women and elderly people. For generations, the men were up north, working in Santa Ana illegally. Now, with the unprecedented wave of deportations under the Obama administration, the men are returning to this small community in droves.

Celita Reyes Muñoz got emotional talking about how alienated she feels in her hometown of Santa Barbara after getting deported from the United States three years ago. She said she and other deportees are stripped of their rights by the local town council. She said the council says people like her don't have a right to participate in municipal matters because they've been gone so long.

Celita Reyes Muñoz is flanked by her husband, Jose Mario Valencia Argueta, and their U.S.-born daughter, Stephanie. Like many other families in the small village of Santa Barbara, they're waiting for their 10 years to be up. That's the punishment handed down by most U.S. immigration judges to those who are caught living in the U.S. illegally and ignoring deportation orders. When Stephanie turns 21, she can sponsor her parents for legal residency.

For more than 20 years, natives of Guerrero, Mexico, have sought a better life in the U.S., with many of them settling in Orange County, especially in Santa Ana. Lately, what was a one-way wave of immigration has reversed. The slow U.S. economy and an unprecedented number of deportations have led many of those immigrants to return to Mexico. Orange County Register staff writers Cindy Carcamo and Michael Mello detail the phenomenon in a two-part story. These stories were made possible by a UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism grant that was funded by the Rosenberg Foundation.

SANTA BARBARA, GUERRERO, MEXICO – The woman who sells sweets and knick-knacks from her front porch tallied up 10 years with her fingers—the time of banishment handed down by a United States immigration judge for entering the country illegally.

Across the road, a couple clung to hope that their U.S.-born daughter may one day be their ticket back north.

A few blocks down, a stocky man, who U.S. officials have removed several times, hopped into a truck for the first leg of his journey to Santa Ana.

These four people are part of a growing group of deportees returning to Santa Barbara — a rural community of about 800 in southern Mexico that’s long been tethered to Santa Ana in Orange County.

Until recently, Santa Barbara’s rustic dwellings were mostly inhabited by children, women and the elderly. Most of the men and many families had left, settling more than 2,000 miles away in Santa Ana and regularly sending photos, letters and money back to Santa Barbara

Now, some of the thousands of people deported from the U.S. to Mexico under the Obama administration are transforming this village, where only two phone lines exist and most jobs revolve around corn cultivation. Men and families are returning from Santa Ana and other areas, carrying with them a new set of expectations that is proving to be a challenge for them and for the community as well.

Some believe their return is punishment for not making the most of their life in the U.S. Others say they feel they are wasting away, joining the many others rummaging for meager work.

Most simply wait in a place they no longer consider home—a purgatory that’s lush and raw.

“This is an eternity,” said Marta Adame, a 45-year-old who was deported along with her husband four years ago.

LIFE BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

The heavy clouds that drape the church and the abundant cornfields are about the only elements recognizable to Adame and the others who return to the village after years — sometimes decades.

Many of those who return—mostly due to deportation—find it difficult to reintegrate into Mexican life because they have become accustomed to the availability of well-paying jobs and inexpensive food and clothing, paired with the ease and efficiency of American life.

After 13 years in the U.S. — about half of that time in an apartment on Flower Street and Edinger Avenue in Santa Ana — Maria de Jesus Memije and her husband, Bertin Olvera Saldaña, lament their homecoming.

“The bad thing is that you return worse off than how you left,” Memije said. “You get used to the nice things. You leave and then you return and can’t get used to this new way of life.”

American dollars from Santa Ana fueled much of the home building in Santa Barbara. However, as its occupants labored in Orange County, many dwellings sat vacant in Mexico. The sun and rain inevitably reclaimed the adobe buildings, eroding them after years of neglect.

Memije’s and Saldaña’s small wood and plasterhome sits steps away from a bend of the river that later in the day is overcome with cackles and gossip as women douse their family’s laundry with muddied water.

A mixture of detergent and ripened fruit perfumed the air as Saldaña looked around, talking about his disappointment in the condition of the home he returned to and helped build with American dollars.

“It was destroyed,” he said of his house with its floor of hard-packed dirt. He pointed to the half-rotted roof. “It’s going to cost $700 to replace the wood. We can’t do anything about it because we have no money.”

The 52-year-old and his wife say they were deported after being duped by a bad immigration attorney. While the couple made enough money with Saldaña’s carpentry job to support their family in Santa Ana and later Arizona, mounting bills, a growing family and legal fees devoured the rest. They said they were penniless upon their return to Santa Barbara.

Their two adult daughters—both in the U.S. illegally—stayed behind while their youngest U.S.-born child, Myriam, 9, joined them.

The couple said they’d grown accustomed to a steady job and a paycheck every other Friday.

“Over there if you work hard, you have everything at your disposal,” Memije said. “You’re not left wanting.”

They are growing corn as a way to make a living, but it’s not enough, they said. Moving to a bigger town, such as Acapulco, with better job opportunities is out of the question because of the region’s security situation. Guerrero has become a staging ground for a horror show of mass killings and lawlessness stoked by a drug war.

REPATRIATION AND RESIGNATION

On the other side of town, Marta Adame gazed out from her makeshift store stocked with sundries. The 45-year-old told her tale in an even, emotionless voice.

She and her husband returned to Santa Barbara four years ago, after an immigration attorney tried to legalize their status based on false claim of political asylum, she said. The couple contends they weren’t aware of the situation when they penned their names on the fraudulent documents.

In turn, an immigration judge barred them from legally setting foot on U.S. soil for a decade, punishment for entering the country illegally and lying to immigration officials.

Adame, who left behind an adult son in Santa Ana, said time is too slow in Santa Barbara.

“I’m bored,” she said. “You can’t find enough to do here.”

In the U.S., she’d become accustomed to hustling to her various odd jobs, such as cleaning homes. On Sundays she’d gather with family and friends at a restaurant or stroll past the Fourth Street’s Latino businesses, hunting for good buys.

“Life over there is beautiful. Even the poorest person lives like a rich person,” she said.

In Santa Barbara, there is none of that. No restaurants. No shopping centers.

Her store—selling everything from candy to flashlights—is the closest around. Dusty jars showcase an array of sweets, such as pink and white marshmallows, chocolates and gum.

She opened her shop because there was nothing better to do in town. It makes just enough profit to help pay for phone calls to family in the U.S.

There’s no alternative but to wait, Adame said. She refuses to make the illegal trek in her later years.

“It’s too dangerous,” she said. “I won’t go without papers.”

RETURNED A FAILURE, FEW HELP

Santa Barbara’s inhabitants have adapted to nights without electricity—a result of afternoon tropical storms that knock down power lines. On a night in August, the town’s only illumination came from worn candles, dimmed lanterns and the twinkling of stars that choked the night sky.

Adolfina Saldaña and her estranged husband, Baltazar, made do with an anemic flashlight, attempting to pack their truck with family members and food before hitting the road to visit a sick friend.

After forging a life in the U.S. for 20 years, the couple moved back to Mexico three years ago. The economy had soured and Baltazar Saldaña, a legal U.S. resident, was unemployed and about to lose his Santa Ana home to the bank.

Baltazar said he is content to live a calm life in his native country.

Adolfina, who lacks legal status in the U.S., longs to return to Santa Ana. She said she’s lost an adult son to an accident and has suffered from chills and depression since she arrived in Mexico.

While they now lead separate lives, they remain companions when they visit their country home in Santa Barbara, attempting to help those who weren’t as lucky.

Adolfina cooks meals, sharing them with friends and family in the village who struggle to buy food.

Sometimes villagers knock on her door, asking to borrow money.

Adolfina says she’s perceived more positively in Santa Barbara than people who are returned by U.S. officials.

Marta Adame, owner of the sundries store,said she and other deportees are still seen as failures.

“Family helps you but many make fun of you if you’re deported,” she said. “It shouldn’t be this way.”

Few are willing to lend a hand.

The Mexican government offers to recoup up to $380 of the costs associated with deportation, including transportation, lodging, and meals as the deportees travel from the border entries where immigration officials drop them off to their home towns. However, only about two people a month make claims in Guerrero state, according to state government officials. At the same time, hundreds return a month.

Many don’t take advantage of the program because it isn’t very well-known and it can take a long time and several trips to the state capital to get the reimbursement, Baltazar Saldaña explained.

SHUNNED BY COMMUNITY

His eyes fatigued with worry, Ernesto Almazan Serrano said he doesn’t have any family in Santa Barbara.

Deported in December 2009, Almazan said he can’t find steady work, and relies on bean, squash and corn crops to provide him with sustenance. His mother, who lives on a scant income in a Santa Ana garage, helps him when she can.

His home is a burnt-out, weathered shack. The thud of roof remnants smashing onto the floor often wakes him at night.

At 15, Almazan followed his widowed mother north, ending up in Santa Ana. He made a good living in construction and had a work visa for some time but lost it due to immigration violations.He became drawn to drugs, particularly crack.

His transgressions have led to four deportations. Incarcerated too many times for drug possession and immigration violations, he was banished by a federal judge from entering the country legally for a decade.

Almazan is candid about the lapses that have earned him a bad reputation and disapproval from many in the village, as well as his family in Santa Ana. He said he is now drug free and hopes that one of his U.S.-born adult children will petition for him some day.

“Sometimes, I just feel like crying,” he said. “Perhaps this is my punishment from God. But this is too much.”

STRIPPED OF RIGHTS

Lush plant life presses all around Santa Barbara. Still, those who return complain that the rivers don’t flow as full as they once did.

“There’s no rain. It’s because the trees are cut down,” Baltazar Saldaña said.

Those who venture north and return to the village usually arrive with more progressive ideas of ecological preservation, he explained.

This shift has churned friction between the deportees and government officials who have sided with long-time loggers—many who’ve never had to venture north to the U.S.

Led by Celso Muñoz Reyes, a U.S. citizen who lives in Santa Ana but maintains strong ties with his native Santa Barbara, the Saldanas and other deportees are fighting to reduce the amount of logging. Muñoz contends that the plundering of the pine forest has had a negative effect on the surrounding area and the wildlife it hosts.

Logging has long been a part of life in Santa Barbara. Aside from farming, cutting trees to sell timber is one of the few ways the villagers have made a decent living, keeping them in town instead of having to migrate to the U.S. It’s a struggle for them to give up on their livelihood because others claim it hurts the environment, Celso Reyes Muñoz and others acknowledge.

Those who’ve returned to Santa Barbara say the politicians, in cahoots with the loggers, are retaliating against them. Village residents have the right to participate in council discussions, meetings, elections and government work programs. However, this requires approval from municipal officials who’ve opted to strip many of the deportees of those rights.

Celita Reyes Muñoz, Celso’s cousin, returned to the village three years ago after she and her Guatemalan husband were deported from the U.S. Still, she said, local officials do not recognize her as a resident of the village.

“If you’re born here, you should have rights,” she said. “How about all the remittances we sent back. I think it’s unjust.”

DEPORTEE RETURNS

Many of the people removed by U.S. immigration officials say they don’t think they’ll ever return to the U.S. illegally. It’s too dangerous and costs too much, with no guarantee of work, they contend.

However, for Teodulo Parra, a stout, strong-shouldered 37-year-old, the chance to return to his wife and children in Santa Ana and the promise of his old job back proved too seductive.

In Santa Barbara, Parra tends to the corn crops and fruit orchards that belong to immigrants who live in Santa Ana. However, it’s not enough to keep his family in Santa Ana fed and clothed.

“There is nothing for me here,” he said, strolling through the muddied roads in the village.

Parra was removed from the U.S. earlier this year after he was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol. Authorities turned him over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, who convinced him to sign off on a voluntary departure. He was returned to Mexico before seeing a judge on the DUI charges. His failure to appear in court sparked an arrest warrant that would eventually trigger his later incarceration.

An indefinite stay in Santa Barbara was never an option, he said.

In August, Parra jumped into the bed of a pick up truck, armed with a small duffle bag. The three-hour trek to Acapulco was only the first leg of his journey to make his way back to Santa Ana.

The following day he took a flight to Tijuana where he waited several days in a cheap motel before his coyote, known as “Pechugo,” said all was clear to jump a fence illegally into San Ysidro.

Parra didn’t make it far. Border agents caught him in September as he tried to jump the fence.

Border agents noticed a warrant for Parra’s arrest out of Orange County and he was taken to the Orange County Men’s Central Jail.

After he served his sentence for the outstanding DUI charge, Parra was taken to the Musick Facility in Irvine, where he now awaits a hearing later this month with an immigration judge. He’ll likely be deported. It will mark the eighth time he’s been returned to Mexico since 1996, an unshaven Parra said from behind a glass partition at the Men’s Central Jail.

He slumped down and blamed his weakness toward alcohol for his situation.

“I’m going to attempt it again,” he said of returning to Santa Ana. “As soon as I can.”

The woman who sells sweets and knick-knacks from her front porch tallied up 10 years with her fingers—the time of banishment handed down by a United States immigration judge for entering the country illegally.

Across the road, a couple clung to hope that their U.S.-born daughter may one day be their ticket back north.

A few blocks down, a stocky man, who U.S. officials have removed several times, hopped into a truck for the first leg of his journey to Santa Ana. It’s important that we keep in who “U.S. officials have removed” not deported. He signed off on a voluntary departure and never has been deported.. almost same thing but not quite.

These four people are part of a growing group of deportees returning to Santa Barbara — a rural community of about 800 in southern Mexico that’s long been tethered to Santa Ana in Orange County.

Until recently, Santa Barbara’s rustic dwellings were mostly inhabited by children, women and the elderly. Most of the men and many families had left, settling more than 2,000 miles away in Santa Ana and regularly sending photos, letters and money back to Santa Barbara

Now, thousands of people removed from the United States to Mexico under the Obama administration is transforming this village, where only two phone lines exist and most jobs revolve around corn cultivation. Men and families are returning from Santa Ana and other areas, carrying with them a new set of expectations that is proving to be a challenge not only for the deportees, but for the community as well.

Some believe their return is punishment for not making the most of their life in the U.S. Others say they feel like they are wasting away, joining the many others rummaging for meager work. Some are becoming involved in politics, only to find that they don’t have a voice.

Most simply wait in a place they no longer consider home—a purgatory that’s lush and raw.

“This is an eternity,” affirmed Marta Adame, a 45-year-old who was deported along with her husband four years ago.

LIFE BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

The heavy clouds that drape the church and the abundant cornfields are about the only elements recognizable to Adame and the others who return to the village after years — sometimes decades.

Many of those who return—mostly due to deportation—find it difficult to reintegrate into Mexican life because they have become accustomed to the availability of well-paying jobs and inexpensive food and clothing, paired with the ease and efficiency of American life.

After 13 years in the U.S. — about half of that time in an apartment on Flower Street and Edinger Avenue in Santa Ana — Maria de Jesus Memije and her husband, Bertin Olvera Saldaña, lament their homecoming.

“The bad thing is that you return worse off than how you left,” Memije said. “You get used to the nice things. You leave and then you return and can’t get used to this new way of life.”

Santa Ana and Santa Barbara are linked by the people who have been dazzled by the promise of lucrative jobs up north, but tugged by family left behind.

Carved by swollen streams and tin-roofed homes, the landscape in Santa Barbara has been shaped by migration between two nations.

American dollars from Santa Ana fueled much of the home building in Santa Barbara. However, as its occupants labored in Orange County, many dwellings sat vacant in Mexico. The sun and rain inevitably reclaimed the adobe buildings, eroding them after years of neglect.

Memije’s and Saldaña’s small wood and plasterhome sits steps away from a quiet bend that later in the day is overcome with cackles and gossip as women douse their family’s laundry with muddied water.

A mixture of detergent and ripened fruit perfumed the air as Saldaña looked around, talking about his disappointment in the condition of the home he returned to and helped build with American dollars.

“It was destroyed,” he said of his house with its floor of hard-packed dirt. He pointed to the half-rotted roof. “It’s going to cost $700 to replace the wood. We can’t do anything about it because we have no money.”

The 52-year-old and his wife say they were deported after being duped by a bad immigration attorney. While the couple made enough money with Saldaña’s carpentry job to support their family in Santa Ana and later Arizona, mounting bills, a growing family and legal fees devoured the rest. They said they were penniless upon their return to Santa Barbara.

Their two adult daughters—both in the U.S. illegally—stayed behind while their youngest U.S.-born child, Myriam, 9, joined them.

The couple said they’d grown accustomed to a steady job and a paycheck every other Friday.

“Over there if you work hard, you have everything at your disposal,” Memije said. “You’re not left wanting.”

They are growing corn as a way to make a living, but it’s not enough, they said. Moving to a bigger town, such as Acapulco, with better job opportunities is out of the question because of the region’s security situation. Guerrero has become a staging ground for a horror show of mass killings and lawlessness stoked by a drug war.

REPATRIATION AND RESIGNATION

On the other side of town, Marta Adame gazed out from her makeshift store stocked with sundries. The 45-year-old told her tale in an even, emotionless voice.

She and her husband returned to Santa Barbara four years ago, after an immigration attorney tried to legalize their status based on false claim of political asylum, she said. The couple contends they weren’t aware of the situation when they penned their names on the fraudulent documents.

In turn, an immigration judge barred them from legally setting foot on U.S. soil for a decade, punishment for entering the country illegally and lying to immigration officials.

Adame, who left behind an adult son in Santa Ana, said time is too slow in Santa Barbara.

“I’m bored,” she said. “You can’t find enough to do here.”

In the U.S., she’d become accustomed to hustling to her various odd jobs, such as cleaning homes. On Sundays she’d gather with family and friends at a restaurant or stroll past the Fourth Street’s Latino businesses, hunting for good buys.

“Life over there is beautiful. Even the poorest person lives like a rich person,” she said.

In Santa Barbara, there is none of that. No restaurants. No shopping centers.

Her store—selling everything from candy to flashlights—is the closest around. Multiple dusty jars showcase an array of sweets, such as pink and white marshmallows, chocolates and gum.

She opened her shop because there was nothing better to do in town. It makes just enough profit to help pay for phone calls to family in the U.S.

There’s no alternative but to wait, Adame said. She refuses to make the illegal trek in her later years.

“It’s too dangerous,” she said. “I won’t go without papers.”

RETURNED A FAILURE, FEW HELP

Santa Barbara’s inhabitants have adapted to nights without electricity—a result of afternoon tropical storms that knock down power lines. On a night in August, the town’s only illumination came from worn candles, dimmed lanterns and the twinkling of stars that choked the night sky.

Adolfina Saldaña and her estranged husband, Baltazar, made do with an anemic flashlight, attempting to pack their truck with family members and food before hitting the road to visit a sick friend.

After forging a life in the U.S. for 20 years, the couple moved back to Mexico three years ago. The economy had soured and Baltazar Saldaña, a legal U.S. resident, was unemployed and about to lose his Santa Ana home to the bank.

Baltazar said he is content to live a calm life in his native country.

Adolfina, who lacks legal status in the U.S., longs to return to Santa Ana. She said she’s lost an adult son to an accident and has suffered from chills and depression since she arrived in Mexico.

While they now lead separate lives, they remain companions when they visit their country home in Santa Barbara, attempting to help those who weren’t as lucky.

Adolfina cooks meals, sharing them with friends and family in the village who struggle to buy food.

Sometimes villagers knock on her door, asking to borrow money.

Adolfina says she’s perceived more positively in Santa Barbara than people who are returned by U.S. officials.

Marta Adame, owner of the sundries store,said she and other deportees are still seen as failures.

“Family helps you but many make fun of you if you’re deported,” she said. “It shouldn’t be this way.”

Few are willing to lend a hand.

The Mexican government offers to recoup up to $380 of the costs associated with deportation, including transportation, lodging, and meals as the deportees travel from the border entries where immigration officials drop them off to their home towns. However, only about two people a month make claims in Guerrero state, according to state government officials. At the same time, hundreds return a month.

Many don’t take advantage of the program because it isn’t very well-known and it can take a long time and several trips to the state capital to get the reimbursement, Baltazar Saldaña explained.

SHUNNED BY COMMUNITY

His eyes fatigued with worry, Ernesto Almazan Serrano said he doesn’t have any family in Santa Barbara.

Deported in December 2009, Almazan said he can’t find steady work, and relies on bean, squash and corn crops to provide him with sustenance. His mother, who lives on a scant income in a Santa Ana garage, helps him when she can.

His home is a burnt-out, weathered shack, feeling its decay. It sits, tired in the shadow of mountains radiating with vibrant hues of green. The thud of roof remnants smashing onto the floor often wakes him at night.

At 15, Almazan followed his widowed mother north, ending up in Santa Ana. He made a good living in construction and had a work visa for some time but lost it due to immigration violations.He became drawn to drugs, particularly crack.

His transgressions have led to four deportations. Incarcerated too many times for drug possession and immigration violations, he was banished by a federal judge from entering the country legally for a decade.

Almazan is candid about the lapses that have earned him a bad reputation and disapproval from many in the village, as well as his family in Santa Ana. He said he is now drug free and hopes that one of his U.S.-born adult children will petition for him some day.

“Sometimes, I just feel like crying,” he said. “Perhaps this is my punishment from God. But this is too much.”

STRIPPED OF RIGHTS

Lush plant life presses all around Santa Barbara. Still, those who return complain that the rivers don’t flow as full as they once did.

“There’s no rain. It’s because the trees are cut down,” Baltazar Saldaña said. “When I was young, water flowed everywhere in the village.”

Those who venture north and return to the village usually arrive with more progressive ideas of ecological preservation, he explained.

This shift has churned friction between the deportees and government officials who have sided with long-time loggers—many who’ve never had to venture north to the U.S.

Led by Celso Muñoz Reyes, a U.S. citizen who lives in Santa Ana but maintains strong ties with his native Santa Barbara, the Saldanas and other deportees are fighting to reduce the amount of logging. Muñoz contends that the plundering of the pine forest has had a negative effect on the surrounding area and the wildlife it hosts.

Logging has long been a part of life in Santa Barbara. Aside from farming, cutting trees to sell timber is one of the few ways the villagers have made a decent living, keeping them in town instead of having to migrate to the United States. It’s a struggle for them to give up on their livelihood because others claim it hurts the environment, Celso Reyes Muñoz and others acknowledge.

Those who’ve returned to Santa Barbara say the politicians, in cahoots with the loggers, are retaliating against them. Village residents have the right to participate in council discussions, meetings and government work programs. However, this requires approval from municipal officials who’ve opted to strip many of the deportees of those rights, including municipal voting rights.

Celita Reyes Muñoz, Celso’s cousin, returned to the village three years ago after she and her Guatemalan husband were deported from the U.S. Still, she said, local officials do not recognize her as a resident of the village.

“If you’re born here, you should have rights,” she said. “How about all the remittances we sent back. I think it’s unjust.”

Reyes said she’s tried to voice her concerns at town hall meetings, only to be rebuffed.

DEPORTEE RETURNS

Many of the people removed by U.S. immigration officials say they don’t think they’ll ever return to the U.S. illegally. It’s too dangerous and costs too much, with no guarantee of work, they contend.

However, for Teodulo Parra, a stout, strong-shouldered 37-year-old, the chance to return to his wife and children in Santa Ana and the promise of his old job back proved too seductive.

In Santa Barbara, Parra tends to the corn crops and fruit orchards that belong to immigrants who live in Santa Ana. However, it’s not enough to keep his family in Santa Ana fed and clothed.

“There is nothing for me here,” he said, strolling through the muddied roads in the village.

Parra was removed from the U.S. earlier this year after he was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol. Authorities turned him over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, who convinced him to sign off on a voluntary departure. He was returned to Mexico before seeing a judge on the DUI charges. His failure to appear in court sparked an arrest warrant that would eventually trigger his later incarceration.

An indefinite stay in Santa Barbara was never an option, he said.

In August, Parra jumped into the bed of a pick up truck, armed with a small duffle bag. The three-hour trek to Acapulco was only the first leg of his journey to make his way back to Santa Ana.

The following day he took a flight to Tijuana where he waited several days in a cheap motel before his coyote, known as “Pechugo,” said all was clear to jump a fence illegally into San Ysidro.

Parra didn’t make it far. Border agents caught him in September as he tried to jump the fence.

Border agents noticed a warrant for Parra’s arrest out of Orange County and he was taken to the Orange County Men’s Central Jail.

After he served his sentence for the outstanding DUI charge, Parra was taken to the Musick Facility in Irvine, where he now awaits a hearing later this month with an immigration judge. He’ll likely be deported. It will mark the eighth time he’s been returned to Mexico since 1996, Parra said from behind a glass partition at the Men’s Central Jail.

Unshaven and drained, he slumped down and blamed his weakness toward alcohol for his situation.

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